Give More Low-Income Students a Path to College

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Harold O. LevyCreditCreditJack Kent Cooke Foundation

By Harold O. Levy

June 22, 2016

For most of its history, America ignored the talents and potential of most Americans. We will never know what great progress might have been made in science, medicine, business and many other fields if we had taken advantage of the brainpower and abilities of all our people — regardless of gender, race, ethnicity or income level.

And people from low-income families continue to face enormous obstacles.

These low-income students lack money, don’t get adequate counseling in high school and face many other barriers that more affluent students never encounter. To enable more low-income students to get a higher education, colleges should make socioeconomic diversity a priority. They should encourage outstanding low-income students to apply, simplify the application process and make transparent the actual tuition price and financial aid possibilities for students from struggling families.

In addition, colleges should devote more financial aid to those who need it and less to those who don’t, by reducing so-called merit scholarships. Colleges should also re-examine their policies of giving preferential admissions to the children of alumni.

Current policies are resulting in an enormous waste of talent. We need to recommit ourselves to the American dream and being the land of opportunity for all.

Former New York City Schools Chancellor Harold O. Levy is executive director of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, which has awarded about $147 million in scholarships to more than 2,000 high-achieving students from low-income families and $90 million in grants to organizations that serve such students.